Girls that Go Bump in the Mind
by scribblemyname
Summary: No one realized just how deep the animosity between telepaths went until sweet, self-sacrificing, foolish Scott Summers offered to help Emma Frost with her homework—and she brought her study partner, Jean Grey, along for the ride.


Marvel owns everything. I own nothing.

**Prompted** by **lithiumlaughter**. Team dynamics. Points for playing with the usual suspects, but Scott, Jean, Emma might be interesting.

* * *

**Girls that Go Bump in the Mind**

* * *

The two young women did not get along, but no one, not even Professor Xavier, knew because let's face it, sweet and lovely Jean Grey was _above_ all that and would never stoop to telepathic revenge, and beautiful, patronizing Emma Frost would _never_ soil her perfection by engaging with those who were beneath her, at least not without sufficient provocation, worthy of losing her reputation for ladylike behavior. But internally, the study partners were vicious, exploiting every advancement in their race to become the most powerful telepath. Their mutual hatred and ambition served them well: it drove their performance and outward smiles until…

Well. Everyone but poor, sweet, self-sacrificing, foolish, foolish Scott knew that it was a definitively ridiculously _terrible_ idea to offer homework help to either of the girls that went bump in the mind. Said mind probably wouldn't like the fallout. So when Scott said loud enough for everyone to hear (not that he was speaking above a gentlemanly level; you could have heard a pin drop when he stopped to talk to Emma over lunch), "I'd be happy to help you with your studies," the whole table shook their heads at him or blinked (Logan) and prayed for the blessed protection over his self-sacrificing, foolish head (Kurt). Everyone knew that Emma and Jean were _telepaths_ and study partners and competitive, even if they were unaware that polite hostility covered their dirty-fought battles with only the thinnest veneers of civilized ladyhood.

That was how it started anyway.

Professor Xavier, the only other telepath on hand—though the rumor mill had it he was in negotiations for another telepathic teacher; the gods who favored young high school students were much prayed of by the student body against the move—was unfortunately quite uninformed of this recent development, having been closeted with Hank about anti-mutant legislation during the dinner, and gave the girls a simple guard and protect assignment with Emma as the antagonizing force and Jean as the defender. Naturally, he expected to be caught off guard sometime during the day (Emma was to plan spontaneously) by the attack and watch, study, and grade as the two battled it out over his own mind. Naturally, being foolishly oblivious to the number one rule of life—'Never assume anything.'—he was not.

Midnight. Sleep tight, don't let the telepaths bite.

Scott woke up to a hammering headache. Who could sleep through _that?_ Then the pain eased, then increased again, then he started to see glimmering flashes of… Was that white? Red? Gold? Wait a minute.

Girls?

He let his head drop back to the pillow, then thought about the drums pounding under his skull and tried to do what the Professor always said: stay calm, determine the source of the problem, then figure out how to deal with it.

He calmed himself down, closed his eyes, and tried to let himself focus on what was going on in his mind. Usually there was always a mindscape of some sort when the Professor came poking in or sending messages, so there would probably be one in this case. It took a few minutes of even breathing and ignoring the sharp spikes of pain that flattened out into dull aches before he saw anything.

He saw diamonds. And firebirds. Something about the very idea of that was beginning to give him a different sort of headache. And how the insults were flying! They just weren't in any language he recognized, being entirely in concept format, so he settled in more, thinking _This is my mind. This is _my_ mind,_ until everything started to make more sense.

Emma was trying to make him think he was in love with her—he almost lost all sense of equilibrium right there—and Jean was shoving her out with more than a few choice epithets of how unlovable Emma was. He found said epithets inappropriate to vocalize or repeat, so immediately discarded any attempt to remember them. The brute strength behind both of their pushing and shoving seemed to be the source of the hammering.

_Girls,_ he said calmly.

The diamond casing crept over his mind again, but couldn't seem to pass the determined wall of flames.

_Girls,_ he repeated, aware that he hadn't even begun to get their attention.

With a tremendous shove, Jean shoved Emma out of his head entirely, then settled down with extremely ruffled feathers in a burning shield that did nothing to remove his now raging and hot migraine.

_Jean._

She noticed him, turned her attention his way, then reformed into her own normal human self. _Oh, hi, Scott._ She seemed a little flustered.

_Please tell Emma that she owes me a Tylenol, then get out of my head!_

Jean vanished and all traces of her presence with her.

Scott opened his eyes and saw through his goggles that it was still night. He groaned and buried his head in his pillow, hoping against hope that the headache would go away.

Emma came creeping down the hall, tapped ever so tentatively on the door, and held out a small bottle.

No need to be rude. He got up, thanked her for the pain killers, then closed the door behind her.

The next morning, Scott was nowhere to be seen, and the polite hositility was buried under smoldering glares between the two girls. Emma had lost the battle _and_ the guy, though Jean was ruffled enough to not care about whether Scott still thought she was such a nice girl.

Professor Xavier called them both into his office later that day and laid some ground rules for homework assignments, worded in such a way that Emma could have sworn he'd accepted Scott's proposed ones without revision and Jean winced at the mild criticism of her level of acceptable fallout. Scott in the meantime took a day off school and iced his head and never offered homework help to anyone again. Though when Kitty overheard him suggesting to Duncan that perhaps Jean could use some help with her studies, she decided he maybe wasn't so foolish after all.

#


End file.
